Notes From Jon

I don’t know about you, but when I think of “New Year’s Resolution,” I think of failure.  We talk about them a lot at New Year’s time, but the rest of the year, the resolution has become an emblem for well-intended but failed plans.

If we realize – as all of us must certainly realize – that most Resolutions are doomed to fail, why do we keep making them?  Each year, about this time a few days after the New Year, I remember that I forgot to make a resolution.  Then I make a resolution to make a resolution sometime in the next few days.  Want to take a guess how well that has come out in the past?

Behind the idea of a New Year Resolution lies a deep desire.  Each of us longs for something new – we long for something to be different.  Life gets stale after a time, and we begin to lose hope that things can be different.  Our sins overwhelm us; our sorrows seem too great for us to bear; the brokenness of the world around us seems never-ending; we are flooded daily with the news of the wrongs others do.  In sum, sometimes you and I get fed up with ourselves and others – our complacency, our laziness, our loneliness, our unfulfilled dreams.

So New Year’s Resolutions aren’t just a self-improvement itch.  They represent our hope that something can be different, that something can be new. Read the rest of this entry »